Sermon for Sunday, October 11, 2020

 

 October 11, 2020    Rev. Peter Hofstra

            It seems like a harsh wedding to be at.  The first guest list has, in its entirety, blown off the king’s banquet.  In addition, some guests go so far as to kill the king’s messengers.  So, the king packs the place with replacement guests.  But there is one who did not dress for the occasion.  So he gets thrown out, not just out of the wedding, but bound hand and foot, thrown into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  And what is the tag line?  Many are called but few are chosen.

            Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven, and to our parable.

            I get the first part.  The first guests are the leadership, replaced by the second set.  That has been Jesus’ theme.  What bothers me most is the man invited to the wedding banquet, singled out for not wearing wedding clothes, and, in a jump from parable to reality, HE is sent to hell.  It seems like an extreme reaction.  I know it was tongue in cheek, but I remember from my childhood when this passage was cited as why we should wear ‘our Sunday best’ because we are coming to worship God. 

            This is a twist on the parables Jesus has told up to now.  As he engages the leadership, this parable continues that they have betrayed their roles as God’s stewards of the Kingdom, this time as the guests who refuse to come to the wedding banquet of the King.  So new guests are brought in, previously the contrasting image of tax collectors and prostitutes, of sinners, who are given the Kingdom.   

            The twist is the guy who was invited, but did not dress for the occasion, did not respond in the right way.  The implication is that we get invited into the Kingdom only to be ejected again?  Or is this pushing too hard on the edges of the parable?  Imposing too much “reality” on a figurative story?

            Jesus makes it plain this is a comparison to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Which is established with the plan of God, achieved in the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Maybe that is why this language bothers me.  The other language of a divine wedding banquet is from Revelations, at the marriage of Jesus and the Church-when it is all done and no one will then be excluded because Sin and Death, Satan and Hell, all have been overthrown.

            In light of this parable, what actually happens to bring someone into the Kingdom of Heaven?  It is the double bind of the Christian faith.  On the one hand, the Bible teaches that God, who is all-powerful, has chosen us from before Creation.  Our names must be in the Book of Life to be admitted into the Renewed Jerusalem, according to Revelation 21: 27.  It is we who then accept the free gift of salvation in Jesus, we who call Jesus our Friend and Savior.  The theological term for that is ‘election’, we are the ‘elect’, elected by God for admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven. 

            Yes, that concept is confusing because for us, in a representative democracy, election has a very different meaning.  We elect those who will lead us, from the local School Board up to the Presidency, literally picking the most powerful person in the world every four years.  But in the church, we flip the concept.  God is the leader and creator of all things.  God elects us to be God’s children.  That is one side of the bind.

            Jesus’ parable seems to fly in the face of God’s election.  If all those people brought in as replacement guests were elect, how could one be thrown out?  This is the second part of the double blind.

            We place the second part of the double bind in the invitation we share each week.  We make the call to accept the gift of salvation purchased by the blood of Christ, to accept the free give of salvation.  We raise our children in a covenant community to accept that gift, given at their baptism, which they confirm to become full members of the church.  The doors are always open to those who give their hearts to Christ Jesus.  We have, to use a sticky phrase, the free will to choose Jesus as Friend and Savior.

            So, on the one hand, God has chosen me to be a part of God’s covenant community, and on the other, I choose to give my life to the Lord and enter into covenant with the Lord.  Both points can be found in the Bible.  The language of becoming a Christian is one of answering a call from God to accept Jesus.  Whether it is a person who turns from sin and accepts Christ for the first time, or a person standing up in church to confirm for themselves the covenant promises made in their baptism, it is taking the hand of our Savior to become a member of His church community.  And God has already decided who we are. 

            Returning to Jesus’ words.  Many are called.  In terms of the parable, this is the ingathering of all the people that the King insisted be brought into the wedding banquet.  But few are chosen.  The gentleman not in his wedding clothes-the implication is God chose Him, but the man did not choose God.   Which questions God’s ability to choose us, God’s perfection, God’s All-power.

            Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven.

            In light of the double bind of faith, does this parable contain a contradiction?  In the freedom as the Creator, God chose us from before creation while creating us with freedom to choose God through Jesus Christ, so that we freely choose what God has already decided.  It reminds me of something that Henry Ford is credited with saying back when the mass production of the Model T.  You can have any color you want, so long as it is black. 

            The power in being chosen by God is in the assurance of our faith.  The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be taken from us.  We concluded last week’s sermon with the words of Romans 8, including promises that neither angel nor demon, nor anything can pull us from the Love of God.  That is because, in Love, God has chosen us.  In other words, nothing can take away my salvation.

            One way to read this parable is to take the purpose of God to its logical extreme.  What do I mean?  God has chosen the elect from before creation.  Our “pre-destiny” has been established, then another two-dollar word that you might have heard, predestination.  So the second set of people were predestined to come to the banquet, except that one guy.  He came, and the argument goes, he was predestined to be tossed into the outer darkness, into hell.  Thus, God has, in effect, a double predestination, some for the Kingdom of Heaven and some for Hell.

            It requires limiting God to human logic for this ‘double’ predestination to be argued.  But the Biblical witness puts God beyond human logic, into the mystery that God chooses us and we, in full freedom to and responsible for our choice, choose God as well.  Hell is not something we can blame on God.  But there is more to this decision-making.  As Paul said, “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.”  Love is the act of creation.  To predestine someone for hell defies the Biblical precept that God is love, acts from love, loves all God’s children.  Coming to Christ is both/and, not either/or.  We both come freely into this relationship of love.

            Our parable is a wedding.  A marriage of love is an earthly example of our election.  The bride and groom come together with mutually expressed love, they pick each other.  In love, God has chosen us and we have chosen God.  The difference is divine, God expressed love for each of us before the Creation.   

            Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven.

            Remember where Jesus is as he shares this parable.  He is on the cusp of entering the final, most painful journey of his life, to the Cross, for us.  His traditional route through the City of Jerusalem, it is called the Via Delarossa, the Way of Tears.  He wants the leaders and the people to understand what is happening under God’s plan.  And this is gospel, Good News, something passed along so that we will understand what is happening under God’s plan for the implementation of the Kingdom of Heaven.  He concludes by telling us many are called but few are chosen.

            Which leads to another mystery of God’s work.  How can we tell when someone is saved?  It is not like God has given out T-shirts, or had us tattooed or something.  Even in our very church pews, how do we know?  We don’t, but God does.  How do we know the outreach that we do as children of the Living God touches the life of another for Jesus Christ?  We don’t, but God does.  How do we know if the love we show to neighbor is in vain?  We don’t, but God does.  And God’s love is our assurance.

            What do we know?  Again from 1 Corinthians 13, we know the God who loves us through faith.  We know the God who saves us through hope.  We know the God who created us through love.  To know that we are chosen is to know the assurance of the Kingdom of Heaven.

            It also means that the work we do to build the Kingdom of Heaven is not by the uncertainty of our own hands, but in the full confidence of the hands of our God.  When we seek to show love, to show mercy, to seek justice, to make peace, there is a greater force than we can imagine behind that work.  How about a far more personal question?  What about my loved ones, my family and friends who are not a part of a Christian community, or have slidden away from that community?  Who don’t have the backing of fellow believers?  What can I know about that? 

            We can know that if it God’s will, our loved one is Chosen already, but they may not have gotten there yet.  And if our picture of God is as an Old Testament punishing Judge, that could be a frightening consideration.  But that is not the God of the Bible.  Our God is loving, our God is merciful, our God is just.  Our God knows what we cannot know.  Our God sees what we cannot see.  Our God moves in ways we cannot begin to understand.  Our God places the free gift won through Jesus before all.  

            So while there is an outer darkness out there, one where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, there are also truly evil people out there.  There are consequences, in this world and the next. 

            But at the end of the day, being in the Kingdom of Heaven is about assurance of faith, not fear of punishment.  It is about an all-powerful God who loves us and knows us by name.  It is about God coming down to earth, coming as Jesus, taking on the form of a servant, and carrying out God’s plan to save us.  It is about Jesus promising us another who will stay with us in his stead, the Holy Spirit, who indwells us.

            The Kingdom is a community in which we live as friends of Jesus, as families who come to Him, baptizing each generation into the promises that we have already received.  And it is a feast, a wedding feast.  That is the image in the Book of Revelation.  Notice how the king says the oxen and fat calves have been slaughtered?  Might shake our modern sensibilities, but I am thinking there is some serious barbeque going on.  And there, we whom God has chosen, we who have chosen God, living in a covenant of love through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, will love him and enjoy him forever.

            Welcome to the Kingdom of Heaven.  Amen.